| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think it's a bad idea, some way to differentiate between 'descriptive traits' that interact with other abilities but don't have any direct impact themselves and 'mechanical traits' that have additional rules within them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like the color coding idea. It has the advantage of adding new information without changing the rules themselves.
The current color coding in the Bestiary is that alignment is in a periwinkle box, size is in a green box, and other traits are in dark red boxes. And we won't need an alignment color anymore.
For a mnemonic the new rulebooks could use Dandelion Yellow for Descriptive traits that do not directly add mechanics and Purple for Prescriptive traits that do add mechanics. I see a few cases in between those two labels. For example, the Rogue trait on a rogue's class feats has the limited prescriptive effect that rogues can take them as class feats, but no direct effect on the feat itself. We could use Lavendar for Limiting traits.
|
I functionally support this in theory just so long as they codify it right out of the gate and "silo" them in a flexible enough way that they don't end up having to invest in new colored silos as they go along.
That said, I hope that they stick Traits back into the oven as a whole for the Remaster and have them universally function in a more mechanical way whereby the Traits on a given item/effect/spell/option/etc are the PRIMARY thing one needs to look up in order to understand exactly how they are supposed to work. As it stands they DID to this with a fair number of Traits but they also seemed to have essentially given up and just used them to sort of describe what something is with the rest rather than to have them function as ways to look up the mechanical meaning/purpose/utility of things that have them, much like how Squiggit mentioned. I'm a bit less forgiving and understanding of how it is presently done and would rather see Traits as a whole overhauled versus simply trying to split hairs and determine which are mechanical versus descriptive in nature as I think if done properly every Trait can and should do BOTH, even if it does mean each Trait takes up more wordcount.
One thing about this idea though that has some iffy viability is that Paizo does its best to try to keep things as accessible as possible and that would also include fully visually impaired or color impaired customers which is something that wouldn't be easy to get around if they are trying to help ensure things are universally understandable. I like the idea though regardless.
I've proposed similar before, so I'd agree with splitting traits into 2 subcategories. Figuring out the best names for each is probably the biggest issue.
I'm less keen on the idea that color coding is enough. I worry about potential accessibility issues for anyone who is colorblind. I also worry that as descriptions are copied to other sources, color coding can easily be lost and forgotten about.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I feel like "you need to be able to tell colors from other colors" runs the risk of being somewhat ableist. Since there are all kinds of colorblindness, and people with other kinds of blindness also play games like this.
So there has to be another way to differentiate "this trait has rules attached" from "this trait is a place for rules to attach", which is a pretty good idea.
What about colour coding + an extra thing on top?
ie colour + a special symbol. Or more simply a superscript letter like
Aasimarᴰ (D for descriptive)
Screen readers.
Your text has to be able to be correctly parsed by text-to-speech software.
Do things like the actions using special symbols work with screen readers? Because if they have some way to make it so the 1 action symbol parses to a screen reader as "1 Action" then maybe something similar could be done maybe?
Makes sense!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Modern board games have a workaround for color blindness. Cards and markers distinguished by color also have an abstract symbol. For example, look at the colored rails on a Ticket to Ride game board. Each one also has a symbol and the card of the matching color has a matching symbol.
As Twiggies suggested, the symbol to complement the color could be extra marks on the box around the trait or the shape of the box.
It is very difficult to use color coding well, since a fair portion of the population is color-blind. And there are multiple types of color-blindness.
Unless you are well trained in accessible design, your color coding schemes are likely to be indistinguishable for many readers, and simply confusing for some.
Fortunately, Paizo has been very good at recognizing this issue and using good design principles in most of their work.
Yep, as someone that's colorblind, color coding is an issue I run into in games and such. I often can't tell some colors apart.
What about colour coding + an extra thing on top?
ie colour + a special symbol. Or more simply a superscript letter like
Aasimarᴰ (D for descriptive)
If you have a special symbol, that leaves a question as to the need for a color at all: for instance, if you added purple to the Reaction symbol would there be meaningful increase in people understanding it? Would it be worth the extra formatting? Then if you think there is a meaningful amount of use, you'd have to pick and choose what which traits it worth the effort, which colors to use and include other methods other than color for them...
Seems iffy IMO.
Different from videogames where usually uses the color as only option to differentiate many things (like team color) in the books designers have space to use many other options like shades and patterns too. As already said Paizo designer have study and probably experience into do such things.
Also, I know it's a selfish response on my part, in the worst case scenario, even if Paizo ignored the colorblind it would still be better than what we have today for most players. But as I said, with proper preparation and care issues of color blindness are avoided.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
yeah seems like the color coding mightve been not as good of an idea as i first thought.
I do admit i did not keep colorblind people in mind so thats a great reminder. So maybe some kind of Symbols might be a far better idea to keep it concise given the use in Pathfinder of certain Symbols for Actions already.
Instead of color coding and shaped boxes, Paizo could use conventional typography. Put a footnote symbol, asterisk * or dagger † or double dagger ‡, after a trait that requires looking up more information. A page number for a reference would be convenient, too.
It would be like
Cloak of Elvenkind Item 7+
ILLUSION INVESTED(† 531) MAGICAL
and the "Investing Magic Items" section begins on page 531. I used parentheses because I don't know how to superscript letters in this forum
A way you could probably do this that would be fine for colorblind people (and screen readers I think use alt-text anyway) would be to invert the colors for either rules traits or non-rules traits.
Like normally a trait is white text in a colored box. I think it would be clear that something is different if you did colored text on a white box.
After all it's not purely necessary that this is immediately clear, but it would be nice to separate rules traits from non-rules traits somehow.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's an interesting idea. It leaves you free to vary the actual color by topic, as a useful but not required secondary hint.
So you'd have contentful and empty traits.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The more it is discussed the more my stance is hardened that if something is a Trait then it needs to at least include SOME mechanical functionality and contain/define rules interactions. Traits shouldn't be about flavor at all, if things need to taste a certain way doing it with Traits is the wrong way to go because flavors need to vary WILDLY from one ability/creature/spell/feat/etc which is how it is supposed to be but in terms of mechanics, in order to make sure the system is understandable and can be learned in a reasonable way they have to keep the underlying mechanics of how everything works under the hood unified and tidy.
I think that there IS a great opportunity during the rewrite so as to create a SOLID and ENFORCED precedent for how they handle printing purely descriptive and flavor text for options such as be placing it right at the front, ideally with some kind of markup such as italics or something like that, but that stuff into Traits, a system that has UNTOLD potential to clean up the rules and mechanical interactions it not, IMO, the way to go about it.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
most traits that don't have explicitly defined effects exist for the purpose of interaction with other effects and categorization/prerequisites. for example, the shadow trait doesn't directly do anything, but the shadowcaster archetype interacts with the trait in a few ways (primarily the shadow spell metamagic, which can only apply to spells with the shadow trait).
That's an interesting idea. It leaves you free to vary the actual color by topic, as a useful but not required secondary hint.
So you'd have contentful and empty traits.
This can be interesting to separate passive traits from active traits. Putting active traits as contentful and passive as empty.
About passive/active traits for those who didn't ear about it:
This concept comes some time ago here in these forums to describe traits that have rules inside them like Polymorph and traits that don't have rules just descriptive text inside like Humanoid. The separation was mentioned due the common fact that many players sometimes forget that some traits in some random feat/action/activity/spell and so on may have rules that applies to it while others are just information but all them may have rules that interacts to them like positive damage vs creatures with Undead trait.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it's pretty cynical to look at changes only in terms of potential ROI.
It's a problem that comes up fairly frequently, even on the rules forum it's a fairly common occurrence for someone to ask about how a feature works when the answer is just buried in trait text.
Having some sort of minor indicator to help confused players and GMs seems like nothing but a whim.
|
|
I think it's pretty cynical to look at changes only in terms of potential ROI.
It's a problem that comes up fairly frequently, even on the rules forum it's a fairly common occurrence for someone to ask about how a feature works when the answer is just buried in trait text.
Having some sort of minor indicator to help confused players and GMs seems like nothing but a whim.
Adding the difference between the traits in some way will necessitate work and efforts on Paizo part (and thus cost them money). I feel it is something we tend to forget. That's all.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That's an interesting idea. It leaves you free to vary the actual color by topic, as a useful but not required secondary hint.
So you'd have contentful and empty traits.
This can be interesting to separate passive traits from active traits. Putting active traits as contentful and passive as empty.
About passive/active traits for those who didn't ear about it:
This concept comes some time ago here in these forums to describe traits that have rules inside them like Polymorph and traits that don't have rules just descriptive text inside like Humanoid. The separation was mentioned due the common fact that many players sometimes forget that some traits in some random feat/action/activity/spell and so on may have rules that applies to it while others are just information but all them may have rules that interacts to them like positive damage vs creatures with Undead trait.
Passive and active traits sounds like a good term for it yeah.
If you use the filled/outline display style you can look at a row of traits on a statblock and know which ones you need to look up.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Adding the difference between the traits in some way will necessitate work and efforts on Paizo part (and thus cost them money). I feel it is something we tend to forget. That's all.I think it's pretty cynical to look at changes only in terms of potential ROI.
It's a problem that comes up fairly frequently, even on the rules forum it's a fairly common occurrence for someone to ask about how a feature works when the answer is just buried in trait text.
Having some sort of minor indicator to help confused players and GMs seems like nothing but a whim.
Look, if you stick with this idea that "there is, but it will cost time and money" then the thing will never go anywhere. In fact, if this concept is strictly followed, there would be no reason for Paizo to make errata in the rules, nor modify the books in the reprints, because "they waste time and money".
Anyway, the very idea of errata improving rules, and the remaster rebalancing the classes are already an example that Paizo is more concerned with product quality and customer satisfaction than simply wanting to earn money pure and simply.
Returning to the topic. For me, the remaster is an excellent opportunity to review these book organization and design issues. The much-maligned cost is already built into the need for the remaster because of the license, so why not take the time to pay attention to necessary tweaks and player suggestions. And it's exactly thinking like this that they are reviewing some classes like the witch, why not take advantage and make some adjustments that make it easier to understand the rules and read the book.
You talk about forgetting, because you forget that almost everything has traits in PF2, and precisely because of that, added to the fact that many of them are just informational or anchors to be used by other rules, that a lot of people tend to ignore them. But it would be much easier to understand if things like Fireball had the Evocation and Fire traits, which are "passive" marked so that the person at a first glance realizes that there is nothing hidden there, while Blindness would have the Incapacitation trait marked in order to show that it actively has rules that alter and limit the use of magic.